Over the years, Patently Apple has covered patents covering a future Apple Watch with a camera (01, 02, 03 and 04 with FaceTime). The most recent Apple patent on this device surfaced this week in our report titled "Apple Thinks Outside the Box and Invents a new Apple Watch Design with a Foldable Display and Dual Cameras."

Today leaker Mark Gurman discussed Apple's ultimate plan for visual intelligence that will go far beyond the iPhone . The company hopes to put this feature at the core of future devices.

In addition to having cameras coming to future AirPods, Apple is developing an Apple Watch equipped with a camera. Our patent reports prove that out. Apple's future AirPods and Apple Watch "have been included in Apple's product planning," according to Gurman.

More specifically, the Power On Newsletter states that "Apple plans to add cameras to the standard Apple Watch Series and Ultra models. The Series version's camera may be similar to the iPhone's front lens, embedded directly into the screen , while the Ultra version adopts a different solution and places the camera on the side near the crown and buttons." Again, these options were described in Apple patents.

Gurman analyzed that the reason why Apple adopted this design may be because the thicker Ultra version has more internal space , which makes it easier for users to directly raise their wrists to scan objects , while users of the Series version need to flip their wrists to use the camera .

He also said: "It would be ideal if these cameras could also support FaceTime, but it is difficult to achieve in reality. The watch screen is too small, the video call experience will not be very good, and it is not comfortable to raise the wrist for a long time. However, from a technical point of view, it is not difficult to migrate the FaceTime application to watchOS."

Every major device ever released by Apple has first been patented many times over prior to being released, whether Patently has found them or not.  In this case, Apple appears to have started this project in 2021, though Apple began the project back in 2016 with a camera built into an Apple Watch band.